This article was originally published in Transportation Alternatives’ Vision Zero Cities Journal. Transportation Alternatives is dedicated to fighting for better walking, biking, and public transit in New York City.
It’s no secret that the United States has a fatal love affair with speed. And our overly permissive relationship directly leads to over 11,000 deadly crashes on our roads every year. Hit by a vehicle going 20 mph, a pedestrian has an 18% chance of death or serious injury. Yet, hit at 40 mph, that same pedestrian suffers a 77% likelihood of death or serious injury. Every mile per hour counts when it comes to saving lives.
Speeding is also a solvable public health problem. Dr. William Haddon, the founder of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that “we’ve been miseducated that the way to solve [traffic violence] is to have more squads of police chasing Americans so that they wouldn’t drive 120 miles per hour rather than arranging cars so they can’t go that fast.” This framework is the basis for our #StopSuperSpeeders campaign.
#StopSuperSpeeders was launched in the summer of 2023 in New York City by Families for Safe Streets and Transportation Alternatives with support from the FIA Foundation, and has since grown into a national movement. In 2024, the FSS Washington D.C. chapter was the first to successfully pass a #StopSuperSpeeders bill in the form of the STEER Act.
In 2025, we joined with the newly emerging Steer Safe Coalition — convened by Smart Start and LifeSafer — to expand this campaign to Arizona, California, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Washington state, with passage secured in the latter two states. These bills require the worst-of-the-worst reckless speeders to install Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) devices — or speed limiters — in their vehicles, in the same way as most states require drunk drivers to install breathalyzers.
By physically preventing vehicles from speeding in the first place, ISA has the potential to be one of the most transformative vehicle safety technologies in a generation and to save tens of thousands of lives.
We compiled ten lessons from recent state legislative efforts that show how this life-saving technology can succeed in the US, even in times of conflicting partisan priorities.
1. Know Your Political Scope
An early attempt to #StopSuperSpeeders included a bill that would have required auto manufacturers to include ISA devices in all new vehicles by default. The auto industry and its lobbyists pushed back against us, and pushed back hard. Our bill was ultimately vetoed. We saw firsthand the political power of a multi-billion-dollar industry, so we switched our strategy to focus on aftermarket devices implemented by the state. This change in scope from federal to state still helps advance #StopSuperSpeeders has seen far less pushback from lobbyists and increasing success across the nation.
2. Target Super Speeders, Not Everyone
In New York City, drivers with 16 or more speed safety camera tickets in a year are twice as likely to kill or injure pedestrians. Several high-profile crashes, including one that killed a mother and two children in March 2025, have been caused by super speeders.
Policies aimed at excessive offenders are more likely to gain traction. These small numbers of drivers are disproportionately dangerous to all other road users, so focusing on these drivers paints a clear picture of a fair, proportional, and pragmatic targeted program.
3. Build the Right Coalition with an Inside/Outside Campaign
#StopSuperSpeeder success stories share one thing in common: they featured a coalition of survivors, safety advocates, legislative champions, and a skilled lobbyist who knew how to navigate the political system from both the inside and the outside.
An inside/outside strategy is a way to organize a campaign that binds — or bridges — people with disparate roles within a system together for a common goal.
4. Center the Voices of Crash Victims
While trends in traffic violence have largely moved in the wrong direction over the last decade, this alone has not elicited a crisis response from decision makers. Data, while important for understanding policy, often does not suffice to drive change alone. Researchers show that people remember stories up to 22 times more reliably than data alone, indicating that elevating the voices of victim-survivors is central to winning the critical mass of support needed to change culture and win policy change.
5. Know When to Fly Below the Radar, and When to Use the Megaphone
Quiet campaigns work better in some states, while others require a bigger megaphone. Virginia’s ISA bill advanced quickly with minimal media fanfare, avoiding sensational headlines that invite opposition. However, other states like New York and California may require a bigger megaphone to break through legislative and political inertia.
The most effective approach may not always be clear from the start, but state legislatures hold clues in their rules and protocols. In New York State, legislators can introduce up to 50 bills in a session. This incentivizes legislators to introduce “messaging bills” — designed more to signal support from the politician than as a serious strategy for passage into law — and increases competition among “serious” bills. New York lends itself to a “go big and be loud” approach if there is any hope of success. Meanwhile, in Virginia, House members are restricted to 15 bills per session, dramatically reducing the dynamics outlined above.
6. Use Different Messages to Achieve the Same Outcome
People and organizations across the ideological spectrum can find common cause in ISA. Left-leaning advocates cited the #StopSuperSpeeders approach as an effective alternative to suspending or revoking licenses, which could potentially deprive working people of their mobility and livelihood. Additionally, justice reform organizations have expressed their support because of the anticipated reduction in interactions between individual motorists and armed law enforcement.
Meanwhile, right-leaning advocates said they appreciate holding disproportionately reckless individuals accountable. They shared the appreciation that this approach offers a concrete, enforceable, and measurable way of preventing dangerously antisocial behavior in shared public space. This bipartisanship is a key source of this campaign’s power.
7. Myth-Bust with Hands-On Demonstrations
ISA technology is often poorly understood, as it is only recently becoming a topic of more mainstream conversation.
Hands-on demonstrations of the technology have helped debunk misunderstandings among decision makers. Legislators with overall poor track records on road safety issues became supporters after experiencing the technology in action.
8. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
In 2019, Families for Safe Streets helped establish the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program (DVAP) in New York City, a driver education program targeting super speeders.
DVAP was a promising and exciting idea at the time, but we learned that building an entirely new apparatus from scratch was prone to failure. A skeptical and reluctant implementing agency, operational hurdles like towing and storage capacity, and an unforeseen global pandemic led to its underperformance and unfortunate demise.
The conditions are different with #StopSuperSpeeders. There are already over thirty states that have legal, regulatory, and logistical systems in place for similar and successful car breathalyzer programs. States know these systems work and how to manage them, and these already existing frameworks provide proven, comfortable, and familiar ground for cautious bureaucracies to build on.
9. Focus on Cost-Benefit and Compare to Existing Examples
ISA programs can often build off the same regulatory framework of car breathalyzer programs, with big impacts for a relatively small cost. The costs of the Washington State program fall at around $1 million, for example, a drop in the bucket of any state budget, given that each deadly car crash costs society over $10 million. That’s a win for even the most budget-conscious politician.
10. Encourage States by Empowering Cities
In 2021, New York City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services launched its first ISA pilot program, providing a real-world case study and empirical evidence of ISA’s safety benefits. Other U.S. cities have followed suit, integrating ISA into their municipal fleets.
Government and private fleets wield considerable purchasing power, and as more fleets incorporate ISA, the technology becomes more affordable thanks to economies of scale. Fleets account for roughly 20 to 25 percent of new vehicle sales in the U.S., with the potential to significantly influence the market.
As fleet adoption grows, public awareness and acceptance will increase, production will scale up, costs will come down, and ultimately, vehicle speeds — and speed-related injuries — will decline across the board. All of this can help move state legislatures.
Public policy debates can fall into the trap of two unproductive extremes: dramatic, oversimplified solutions to complex problems, or a sense of hopelessness that nothing can change because the system is too broken. But our experience shows that between the two, there is an opportunity.
People want to see that real problems — like speeding — can be meaningfully addressed with practical, evidence-based policies leading to safer, better outcomes for everyday families. The #StopSuperSpeeders campaign reflects this approach — ambitious and forward-thinking, yet firmly grounded in what’s achievable. Its early success and attention are signs that this balanced approach resonates.
The road ahead is long, but our progress is undeniable. Let’s go further, together — join us.
